The idea of training every line manager to be a coach for their direct reports is a persistent trend in leadership development. Across industries, organisations embrace it and implement programs teaching sales managers to coach their representatives, training technical managers to develop their specialists, running workshops on coaching skills for operations leaders. In many, if not most cases, lasting change is underwhelming.
These programs don’t fail because the concept is flawed. They fail because we have not clearly understood what we’re trying to achieve.
Manager-as-Formal-Coach Doesn’t Work
Think about the roles of a manager and a professional, formal coach. What are their responsibilities? What is their duty to the coachee? What is their duty towards the organisation?
A manager evaluates performance, allocates resources, and makes decisions about promotion and compensation. A coach creates a space for exploration, vulnerability, and learning without judgement. These roles and objectives can clash, and doing both simultaneously in the same relationship isn’t a trivial endeavour. A line manager cannot function as a formal coach to their direct reports. The roles conflict fundamentally.
Standards Australia’s handbook on organisational coaching argues that organisations struggle to make ‘manager-as-formal-coach’ work: “Even if organisations begin with the intention of having ‘coaching’ as a separate activity for line managers with their teams, we haven’t yet found any organisations that have done it successfully.”
The managerial role is fundamentally one of evaluation, direction, and resource allocation. This is often in direct opposition to the dynamics of trust, vulnerability, and non-judgement required for an effective coaching relationship.
What These Programs Should Build
Does this mean manager-as-coach programs are pointless? No. It means we need to be clear about what we’re building.
These programs work when the explicit aim is developing a coaching style of leadership, not turning managers into coaches. Your managers don’t need to conduct formal coaching sessions. They need to shift their default communication patterns from directing to developing. They need to ask questions before giving answers. Instead of solving every problem for their team members, they need to give them time to think about how to deal with problems.
This isn’t just splitting hairs in some abstract semantic argument. It’s the difference between a program that teaches managers to “be coaches” and a program that builds coaching skills into how managers already work, integrating naturally into their daily interactions.
For example, a sales manager in complex B2B sales (e.g., pharmaceuticals) reviewing a representative’s territory plan doesn’t need to schedule a separate “coaching conversation.” They need to use coaching skills within the business review itself. Instead of: “Your call frequency on the key accounts is too low – you need to increase it,” they might ask: “Talk me through your thinking on the key account segment. What’s driving your current call allocation?”
Same conversation. Same desired business outcome. Different skill set applied.
A technical manager reviewing a specialist’s project approach doesn’t need to set aside time for “a coaching session.” They need to use coaching skills within their normal project reviews: “What approaches have you considered for this integration challenge?” rather than “Here’s how you should approach this integration.”
The Measurement Problem
When we measure manager-as-coach programs by whether managers can define coaching use specific models, or by the number of formal coaching sessions they schedule, we miss the point entirely.
The question is: has the manager’s day-to-day leadership approach shifted? Do team members note more autonomy, clearer thinking, better problem-solving capability? That’s what coaching skills enable. That’s what we should be measuring.
Most programs measure:
- Completion rates
- Feedback scores
- Ability to define coaching
- Knowledge of coaching models
- Self-reported confidence in coaching skills
What they should measure:
- Changes in manager communication patterns (observed or reported by team)
- Team member autonomy and problem-solving capability
- Quality of decision-making at team level
- Frequency of developmental conversations (not formal coaching sessions)
- Team member perception of manager support for growth
The metrics you choose are a signal of what you value. If you measure completion and recall, managers optimise for those things. If you measure behaviour change and team capability development, you’re more likely to get results that matter.
What This Means for Your Programs
If you’re running or designing manager-as-coach training, three changes will improve effectiveness:
Be explicit about what you’re building.
Don’t call it “turning managers into coaches.” Frame it as “coaching skills for more effective leadership.” The language matters – it sets expectations and reduces role confusion.
Integrate coaching skills into existing management practices.
Don’t require managers to schedule separate coaching conversations. Expect them to use coaching skills in performance reviews, business planning discussions, problem-solving conversations, and project debriefs. Make it part of how they already work, not an additional task.
Measure behaviour change, not knowledge acquisition.
Seek feedback focusing on specific behaviours: “My manager asks questions to help me think through challenges” versus “My manager tells me what to do.” Track changes in team autonomy, problem-solving capability, and decision-making quality. These indicate whether coaching skills are being applied.
You don’t need a cohort of certified coaches. You need managers who default to developing their people rather than directing them and who do this within their existing responsibilities, not as an ‘add-on’ activity.
Coaching skills make managers more effective. But only when we’re clear about what we’re trying to achieve and how to measure it.
This is Part 1 of a five-part series examining what research reveals about effective coaching. Return to the series overview to explore other evidence-based realities about coaching that contradict common practice.